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Licensed Illinois land surveyors delivering sealed plats of survey for closings, fences, permits and boundary questions across Chicago and Cook County.
Licensed Illinois land surveyors · Sealed plats for closings, permits & boundary disputes
Home › Services › Residential Boundary Surveys › Chicago, IL
Chicago is the anchor of Cook County and the third-largest city in the United States, a place where nearly every parcel sits inside a long-established grid of platted subdivisions. With more than 2.7 million residents packed onto tightly drawn city lots, a plat of survey is often the single document that settles exactly where one owner’s ground ends and a neighbor’s begins. For buyers, lenders, and anyone pulling a permit here, that certainty is worth having in writing.
A plat of survey is a drawing, signed and sealed by a licensed Illinois land surveyor, that locates the corners and boundary lines of your lot and depicts the buildings, driveways, fences and recorded easements on the property. It is the document lenders, title companies and municipal permit desks rely on.
The Pi Surveying process — clear, sealed, and ready for your closing or permit.
Chicago is unusual in Cook County in that it operates without a township, sitting directly under municipal and county administration. Its population of roughly 2.75 million lives on some of the most densely subdivided ground in the Midwest, where original plats can date back generations and lot lines rarely match what a fence or garage suggests on the surface. Recorded plats for Chicago parcels are filed with the Cook County Clerk’s Recordings Division, which absorbed the former Recorder of Deeds function in December 2020. Because the city fronts Lake Michigan and is threaded by the Chicago and Calumet river systems under the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, riverfront and low-lying parcels can fall within FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas, and dense zero-lot-line development makes setback, easement, and encroachment questions a routine part of surveying work.
Official resources for Chicago property owners
In Chicago, most transactions, permit applications, fence and addition projects, and title closings call for a current plat of survey showing the lot’s dimensions, improvements, and any encroachments. On the city’s tightly platted lots, it is the clearest way to confirm exactly what you own before you build or buy.
Recorded plats and related documents for Chicago parcels are filed with the Cook County Clerk’s Recordings Division, which took over the Recorder of Deeds function in late 2020.
It can. Parcels close to Lake Michigan or the Chicago and Calumet river corridors may lie within a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area, which a licensed surveyor can identify and, if needed, document with an elevation certificate.
Beyond a plat of survey, Pi Surveying provides the full range of land surveying services for Chicago property owners and builders:
We also prepare sealed plats of survey across nearby Cook County communities:
Get started on your next project with Pi Surveying’s expert land surveying services. Contact us today to schedule your survey and get accurate and reliable results.
Send us your property address and a licensed Illinois land surveyor will prepare a quote for your project.
Pi Surveying, located in Oak Brook, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, is a professional land surveying design firm that provides land surveys for both the private and commercial sector.